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Tourism Education and Edu-Tourism

Development: Sustainable Tourism Development
Perspective in Education 1

Conference Paper · October 2014

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 Tourism Education and Edu-Tourism Development:
Sustainable Tourism Development Perspective in Education 1

Elly Malihah, Heri Puspito Diyah Setiyorini

ellyms@upi.edu, hp_diyah@upi.edu
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia

Abstract

Education is a conscious and objective effort for developing human resource to be a better
person. Education cannot be seperated by human life and their daily activities, including their
activities in doing their leisure activities, recreation, and tourism. There are still limited studies
that attempt to discover the relationship between tourism education and education tourism (edu-
tourism). Both activities are similar in such a way, that nowadays, people travel to find more
experience and knowledge to improve their quality of life. However the notion of tourism
education and education for tourism is also found to be different. Tourism education is the way
tourists destination prepare the human resources to be able to work professionally in the
developing the tourism sectors. Meanwhile, the Edu-Tourism is a form of tourism activities that
emphasize the education content to fullfill the tourist’s needs and motivation to gain knowledge
during their travel. Furthermore, this paper will discuss that there is a relationship between both
notions. The proposition is that better tourism education will enhace tourism activities with
education content. Nowadays the notion of people travelling are more motivated by enhancing
their quality of life. This meaning should also be placed in the eyes of the local people or
educated people who developed tourism in destination. More educated people who take a part in
destination tourism development would depict the better quality of life, for both tourists and
local people at the destination. So, the one of success factors of tourist destination would depend
on the successful effort in developing tourism education for stakeholders that consists of public
sectors, private sectors, community, and tourists. Hence, this paper focus on three aspects on the
relationship of tourism education and edu-tourism, such as (1) how is the role of education in
developing tourism; (2) how to create tourism activities that contain education issues; (3) how
education and tourism could participate in enhancing the better quality of life in the frame of
progressive world civilization and sustainable development.

Keywords: tourism education, education tourism, quality of life, world civilization, and
sustainable development

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Presented at The 1st International Seminar on Tourism (ISOT), Bandung 27 - 28 October 2014 – “Eco-Resort and
Destination Sustainability: Planning, Impact, and Development”

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A. Introduction

Tourism has become a major science taught in higher education. At the first time,
tourism education has been taught in the form of vocation school (Airey and Tribe, 2005) then in
the development it evolved to be taught as a study in more academic nuances. This means that
tourism education has been developed to balance the tourism development demand for fulfilling
the broader perspective of managing tourism. The industry needs more comprehensive analysis
than just providing the skilled graduates to be able to work in the tourism business. This notion is
in line with Lewis (2005) propotion which stated that “Balancing the vocational and liberal
aspects of tourism education is vital to producing a well-rounded graduate. This balance
develops students who are broadly educated and knowledgeable about, and responsible in,
tourism development as well as occupationally functional in tourism. Concentrating on just the
vocational impoverishes students and renders them less likely to be able to respond to
stakeholders in a developing tourist society.”
Since there are a number of stakeholders in tourism management, the industry has called
for graduates with more academic insight to solve tourism management problems in the society.
Thus, the need for developing tourism education with academic perspective has been increased.
However, though the tourism education has been developed in emphasizing concept learning in
academic point of view, there were still the needs of understanding for the occupational
knowledge. Hence, the tourism education was also dealing with internship or on-the job training
program for the students. Based on this situation, Busby (2003) has stated that “internships and
apprenticeships in the industry, as well as academic subjects closely related to specific needs in
the field such as: marketing; finance; management; and human resources; improve student
development and competence.”
The understanding of industry condition in the real situation would lead to strong
benefit for the students’ competency. Tribe (2001) study showed that “Internships also increase
the ability of students to critically reflect on the tourism business. Furthermore, the real world
condition also has contributed to the curricullum development or the tourism education
institution. Moreover, to meet the requirement of tourism industry, the graduates has also been
taught about the notion of sustainable development. There were a tourism education institution,
called Business Enterprises for Sustainable Travel (BEST), has developed a set of curriculum
modules to teach students the relevance among principles of sustainable tourism and specific
management techniques, and how to apply such knowledge. The modules contained the
programs that aimed to make the students could “identify, understand and address how current
and future sustainability issues might impact their operation and their stakeholders” (Jurowski,
2002: 544).
One of the issues in developing curricullum for sustainable tourism development is by
experiencing the real condition of tourism development. The aimed was for educating the
students to identify and understand problems existstance in sustainable tourism development.
Hence, one of learning method developed to fulfill the need for experiencing the real condition is
through field study or field trip. The activities has been created into the form of tourism called as
education tourism (edu-tourism) or tourism activities that were proposed to gain better
knowledge and understanding for scholars.
In the broader context, the edu tourism was not only meant for scholars, but also for all
people who wanted to improve their knowledge and experience in their travel or tourism

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activities. Thus, this notion would also call far a competency in tourism education, especially in
aranging the tourism education activities.
Therefore, there would be an intersection for developing the education for tourism and
developing the tourism education. This paper would analysed the intersection of this notion and
how the tourism education would respond to the edu-tourism development

B. Education Tourism (Edu-Tourism)

Bodger (1998) defined education tourism or edu-tourism “to any program in which
participants travel to “location as a group with primay purpose of engaging in learning
experience directly related to the location” The form of edu tourism consists of ecotourism,
heritage tourism, rural/farm tourism, and student exchanges between educational institutions.
Those activities were incorporated to learning method and curricullum of the scholars. The
objective of those activities were integrated with the subject of students at their schools. Thus, in
managing the edu-tourism destination, the management need to understand the scientific
contribution for the scholars who visited the place.
This understanding emphasized that the tourists of the edu-tourism are those who wre in
academic institution. It could be students, teachers, researchers, or academic staffs. Gu0
(2000,pp.4-6) moted that Education-Tourism is “a kind of special short-term tourism whose
purpose is learning and knowledge gaining and whose major participants are students with
minor participants teachers”. Hence, Yuan (2003, pp.10) compiled that the activities of
education tours were various, “ranging from getting to know a school, custom or culture,
studying a language, attending a symposium or seminar to attending an academic or research
project”
Wang and Li (2013) discovered that “the destinations of education tour are always set
in reputed schools, institutes, universities or some historical sites and famous scholars’
residence. It is expected that each participant can gain skills or knowledge in education tours. It
is believed that education tour can enrich a person’s knowledge and upgrade tourists products
for the local tourism industry.” As an illustration, Dong (2004,pp.15) in Wang and Li (2013)
stated that China has become the first destination choiche for Japanese edu-tourists. The
activities of those tourists were experiencing education tour, such as technology tour, alley tour,
and environment protection tour. In the mean of accomodation, the tourists prefere to live with
the local people for enriching their experience.
In the broader context, Ritchie (2009) defined educational tourism as “Tourist activity
undertaken by those who are undertaking an overnight vacation and those who are undertaking
an excursion for whom education and learning is a primary or secondary part of their trip”. His
definition open the wider understanding that edu-tourism is not just travel arrangement made for
scholars, but also for people in the society. He added that people who would like to travel by the
cultural motivation usually searched for learning element, finding novelty, and education. Long
before he proposed this ideas, Bourdieu (1984) argued that “to understand and appreciate
cultural products, people must have a competency / cultural capital that allows them to
recognize and interpret these products”. Thus, Ritchie (2009) stated that this ability could be
gained through “growth, education and other forms of socialization”. So, the growing number of
activities and demand of edu-tourism has encouraged the enhancement of tourism occupational
competency. This competency would be incorporated in tourism education system.

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C. Tourism Education

1. Developing Tourism Education

Tourism science or studies has been taught at the higher level because it could
contribute to customer satisfaction and the competitiveness of tourism business (Bashraf and Al
Saleh, 2013). There were increasing number of universities in the world which focus on
hospitality and Tourism Programs (Kim et. Al, 2008). Tourism education were developed for
preparing the human resources at the tourism business/industries. Thus, many universities have
attempted to link and match the curriculums and modules with the industral needs. Hjalger
(2003) have studied the students motivation in learning tourism and hospitality management. The
result indicated that there were three motivations, such as: 1) going to school to gain the work
expereience 2) increasing value programs in tourism industries and 3) preference to work people.
The students also wanted to be more professional in the tourism work environment and accordin
to Johnson et al, (2006) that “professionalism can be realized through education”.
Hence, Hjalger”s (2003, 33-34) has argued that “closer links between stakeholders and
educational institutions is a step towards the professionalisation of the entire sector and to
improving the knowledge base and innovative and economic capabilities”. This notion were
strengthend by Zagonari’s (2009:7) who stated that “policies on tourism education and training
should provide a balance between professional skills, basic knowledge, thematic specialization:
students should reach professional skills in order to meet the current qualitative need of firms”.
This argument was in line with Airey (2008) who describe the evolution of tourism
education into four stages within 40 years of its existance. The concept of evolution are as
follow:

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 Table 1: 4 Stages of Tourism Education Summarized from Airey (2008)
The Industrial Stage
(1960s-1970s)
• highly based in economics and business studies
• highly vocational in aim and content (degree
program)
• a focus on practice and operation of the
industry
• the courses were designed to leave the students
“surprise free” about what they would find in
employment
The Benchmark Stage
(2000s-2010s)
- It was one of a series of such statements, which
were the outcomes of attempts by the
“academic community to describe the nature
and characteristics of programmes in a specific
subject” (QAA, 2000: 1).
- Tourism in 2000 went well beyond the study of
the industry and included the role of tourism in
communities and environments, the nature and
characteristics of tourists themselves as well as
tourism as an area of study
- Current programme provision that includes for
example “Ethical issues in tourism,”
“Sustainable tourism,” “Tourism and the Third
World,” “Tourism, culture and society,”
Cultural anthropology and tourism,” and
“Photography, travel and visual culture.”.
The Fragmented Stage
(1980s-1990s)
- Uncertainty about the curriculum
- Teachers were attracted into tourism from a
range of other subject areas, bringing with them
a wealth of different disciplinary and
methodological approaches and associated
knowledge.
- In other words, there was a fragmentation
between the business and non-business oriented
tourism programmes and within the non-
business programmes a diversity of approaches
reflecting the burgeoning knowledge base and
the inevitable contests over the curriculum.
The Mature Stage
(2010s-...)
- To the extent that these have been characterized
by uncertainties—about the size of the
provision, about the balance between practice
and theory, and, above all, about the curriculum
- New areas of enquiry, by engagement with
wider debates and self-criticism, and by a more
mature consideration of the role of tourism
education.
- develops students’ capacity to think for
themselves,” “stimulates intellectual curiosity,”
“reviews and modifies knowledge,” suggest a
deeper level of understanding of the purpose of
higher education in tourism (D.Stergious, 2004)
- Annette Pritchard, Nigel Morgan, and Irene
Ateljevic (2007). The result for C. Aitchison
(2006: 417) is that “tourism studies, with its
social and cultural underpinning, has emerged
as a distinct field from tourism management,
with its primarily economic underpinning.”

2. Grand Design and Examples of Tourism Education

The concept also exist in Indonesian evolution in tourism education. During 1960s –
1970s, there were a lot of tourism vocational schools provided by the government to fulfill the
human resources at the operational level of tourism businesses, such as hotel, restaurants, and
travel agencies. In 1970s -1970s, the tourism degree were move up to higher level and the
education were conducted by government as well as private education institution. It didn’t only
provide the diploma degree for 2-3 years of study, but it also provided the 4 year diploma degree.
The 4 year diploma degree of tourism analyse the development of tourism as a fragmented
subject. There are multidiscipline approaches introduced in this era. There were also a strong
demand for graduates at that degree to continue their studies into bachelor degree or post

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graduate degree at academic institution, mostly in economic discipline since there were not
tourism studies postgraduate institution during that time.
The evolution has continued to the next level, the benchmark stages (2000s – 2010s).
During the period, Indonesia University of Education starts to open 3 study programs at bachelor
degree that have differences from prior tourism schools indonesia. The study programs
emphasize on academic degree for tourism and have less vocational content in the curricullum.
This activities then followed by other institutions.
After almost a decade, the tourism education at academic level face the bigger challenge
for positioning the tourism science into clearer and independent discipline with wider
understanding of many supported discipline. Hence, it leads tourism science to be developed by
not just multidisciplinary approach but also interdisciplinary approach and transdisciplinary
approach. The discipline, according to Popescu and Baltaretu (2012) “must find ways to create
tourist products, ways of efficient their marketing, modern methods of management and resource
allocation in order to sustain tourism firm offers a lucrative tourist ways of managing
relationships with all interested, but especially with clients, effective communication techniques
and tactics with employees, suppliers, customers, partners, customer loyalty methods, ways to
ensure tourism quality, methods human resource management, etc.” The growth of tourism as a
science are also indicated by the development post graduate tourism program in some
universities.
In relations to the degree offered in tourism education, Dale and Robinson (2001)
proposed three domains in tourism education for degree offer category, such as: ‘generic degrees’
that provide broad understanding of the tourism and interdisciplinary skills; ‘functional degrees’
that focus on particular areas of tourism such as marketing, information systems, or planning;
and ‘market/product based degrees’ that focus on the development of a particular product or
market, requiring expertise in the area.”
The programmes would use the basic of the body of knowledge and skills that enable
them to function effectively in the industry (Dale and Robinson, 2001). However sometimes, it is
hard to define the tourism body of knowledge. Hence, Ernawati (2003) implied that in designing
the tourism curricullum, educators should understand the industrial needs of expertise. Thus, the
scholars need to understand and experience more to the situation. Hence, it would create travel
for scholars and form the edu-tourism activities.
In wider context, edu-tourism then become a point that should be considered in the
tourism curricullum because in developing tourism we also need to educate the tourists, the
communicity, the private/business sector, even the government in isolated area. Them it is in line
with Popescu and Baltaretu (2012) that argued a concept that “tourism has an educational
component as it involves intercultural exchange and understanding between people of different
races, religions, cultures.” Hence, more educated traveller do the travel with more awareness on
a proper manner and not harming the nature, culture, and also social well being of local people.
This notion then can sipport the sustainable for tourism development in a region.

D. Conclusion

There were an intersection between the concept of edu tourism and tourism education. Edu-
tourism could encourage the scholars to understand and experience more for their study.
However the tourism study also has evolved into mature stage that was indicated by the multi-,
inter-, and trans-discipline approaches. Thus approaches could be implemented by using the

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 edu-tourism activities. However, more scholars participated in the edutourism activities wolud
encouraged the tourism education to also provide more insights or content of managing the edu-
tourism itself. In the concept development, the edu-tourism was not only participated by the
scholars, but also all the ducated tourists who seek for knowledge enrichment and enhancement
during their travel.

E. Reference

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